S it Kenneth Newman announced that the Metropolitan Police will be equipped with, and trained in the use of, armoured vehicles, plastic bullets, CS gas and longer truncheons as...

TEN years ago three regular contributors — Richard West, Patrick Marnham and Auberon Waugh — proposed in a letter to the Spectator that a public monument be erected to the...

HOWE TO COMFORT THEM W hen Sir Geoffrey Howe was flying to Zambia on Tuesday night, we doubt whether he had time, amid the briefing material which his officials gave him, to...

from 1 January 1988, all television sets sold in the United Kingdom should be adapted to receive programmes paid for by direct subscription. Assuming that this excellent...

Earth, air, fire, water and Professor Peacock FERDINAND MOUNT 0 lder readers may recall how delight- fully Flanagan and Allen used to sing `Free'. They would start off...

WOODROW WYATT D enis Healey was a Communist at Oxford because he was fascinated by pow- er. Like Kingsley Martin he thought that a Communist takeover in Europe was inevit- able....

The lesbian challenge: an inquiry into available choices AUBERON WAUGH 0 ne of the great figures of Irish sporting history was Mr A. M. Kavanagh (1831-1889) — 'the...

The West is less and less ready to receive number of 'orbit cases' with nowhere to go THIS last week the United States has been celebrating, with extravagant hoopla, the...

Richard West on the supporters of the deposed president Marcos, and Sunday's abortive coup to restore him Manila IN THE week before Sunday's attempted putsch by troops loyal...

Charles Glass meets Yasser Arafat, this week attacked by Jordan, who survives continued failure Tunis THE old guide shuffled through the ruins of Carthage, telling its history...

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on the fate of Nicaragua's best and most independent newspaper Managua NICARAGUAN ladies like to dye their hair. In youth they fight their darkness,...

Fifty years after the outbreak of the to his old battlefields ON THE Plaza de Santa Ana in the old quarter of Madrid, near the hotel where I was staying, stands one of the...

Stan Gebler Davies on the bankruptcy of a burial ground There'll come a season when you'll stretch Black board to cover me: Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor wretch, With...

Timothy Garton Ash enjoys a German fantasy about modern Britain DIE ZEIT is Germany's best weekly pap- er. It has published many articles about Britain, notably those by Ralf...

STUDENTS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY TO ENJOY THE SPECTATOR AT LESS THAN HALF PRICE* More stimulating than any lecture, funnier than the set books, The Spectator should be required...

the failure of Peacock leaves the BBC problem unsolved THE publication of the Peacock Report, which has been almost universally received with derision if not contempt, leaves...

get rapid treatment on the NHS for your hernia IT IS a great source of comfort to every Briton to know that if knocked over in the street he will, unlike an American, receive...

SHAW, pressing his advances on Mrs Patrick Campbell, urged her to imagine a child with her beauty and his brains. Mrs Campbell backed away: 'But supposing, Shaw, it had your...

TUESDAY will offer the last chance to tread the Stock Exchange's historic floor, before all goes skyward in the Big Bang. Making its contribution to the City of London Festival,...

MY SELF-IMPOSED vow, to stop teasing Lloyd's of London about its technological new buildings, has been cracked by a notice passed to me by a friend in the market. It is headed...

Pearson's chief can see more cavalry where Custer comes from CHRISTOPHER FILD ES L ord Blakenham, staring out from the besieged encampments of the Pearson group, must have...

THE planners of the Corporation of the City of London are running down to form. They have this week blessed the plan to tack on a new top storey above the Royal Exchange. They...

If Mr Kinnock came into his kingdom JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE 'SEVEN-and-a-half cents,' as the striking garment workers in Pajama Game used to sing, 'doesn't seem a hell of a lot',...

Sir: Dr Rowse is not only our most eminent historian. He is also one of our most vivid stylists. Like all the really great historians — Gibbon, Carlyle, Macaulay — he is not...

my claim to have been right about events in 1936, I have taken the trouble to look up in the Spectator volume what I did say at the time: If a real crisis arises, and we are...

Sir: Where else but in the literate pages of the Spectator could we have discovered that we shared a common interest with Lord Gowrie (Summer wine and food, 21 June)? Miss...

Sir: 'Refuseniks' (Andrew Neil, Letter, 24 May) are Soviet citizens who wish to emigrate, and are persecuted for merely requesting this basic right: they are being refused. The...

Sir: Lord Bruce-Gardyne (The economy, 28 June) is, of course, welcome to his choice of tiger-hunting companions. I my- self would hesitate before embarking on any sort of...

Sir: I am not St Augustine. I did not intend last week (`God versus W.B. Yeats') to reinvent the City of God and put it down, of all places, in Dublin. I meant to refer to `the...

Sir: Although Auberon Waugh's hard-won knowledge of law of libel is impressive (Another voice, 28 June), the disappointed litigant might do better to rely on a successful bid...

SUBSCRIBE TODAY - At 20% off the Cover Price! Please enter a subscription to The Spectator I enclose my cheque for f (Equivalent $US & Eurocheques accepted) RATES: 12...

Torment in Cuba Hugh Thomas AGAINST ALL HOPE by Armando Valladares translated by Andrew Hanley Hamish Hamilton, f12.95 P lease turn over! The odds must be that this article,...

Denis Hills THE AFRICANS: A TRIPLE HERITAGE by All Mazrui BBC, f14.95 A s a youthful professor of political science at Makerere university, Kampala, in the Sixties, Ali...

Humphrey Carpenter THE MORONIC INFERNO AND OTHER VISITS TO AMERICA by Martin Antis Cape, £9.95 A nthony Powell stabs Lady Violet and nearly kills her. William Golding nearly...

God is a great emptiness I know is there: The somewhere else without which Nothing is. A stubborn quiet noise cannot put out. Not that I woke And in due course shall sleep....

Allan Massie G. K. CHESTERTON by Michael Ffinch Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f16 AUTOBIOGRAPHY by G. K. Chesterton Hamish Hamilton, £5.95 I t is the English practice to license...

Peter Levi GIACOMETTI: A BIOGRAPHY by James Lord Faber & Faber, £25 iacometti's sculpture has something in common with prehistoric art, particular- ly the Sardinians, but it...

Montagu Curzon BHAGWAN, THE GOD THAT FAILED by Hugh Milne Caliban Books, 172 H ugh Milne used to be Swami Shiva- murti, one of the earliest and keenest disciples of Bhagwan...

The sirens sang it: it was the old song of Europe and the philanderer, his moustaches brushed and waxed, a sly wink of galoshes on the pavement as he strolled along. The sirens...

David Sexton A MATTER OF HONOUR by Jeffrey Archer Hodder & Stoughton, £9.95 I n a recent Spitting Image programme the puppet Jeffrey Archer was seen ham- mering away...

Anita Brookner THE SHRAPNEL ACADEMY by Fay Weldon Hodder & Stoughton, f8.95 T he Shrapnel Academy is a fable ex- trapolated from earlier and more stinging reports on warfare...

Opera Shaken and stirred Rodney Milnes Porgy and Bess (Glyndebourne) Fidelio (Covent Garden) M any surprising points are raised by the triumphant first night of Gershwin's...

Les Patineurs Scenes de Ballet The Dream (Royal Opera House) Strength and weakness Julie Kavanagh T he thumbs-down that critics gave Jiri Kylian's Return to a Strange Land...

French 19th- and 20th-century Paintings (Stoppenbach & Delestre until 26 July) Mirror images David Wakefield T he theme of French landscape is continued this season in the...

Fool for Love ('15', selected cinemas) Western obsessions Peter Ackroyd 0 nce again Robert Altman has adapted a stage production; after Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy...

Joe Pleenik Gavin Stamp I t is both flattering and yet deflating when what one fondly imagines are person- al discoveries become publicly acclaimed. This is, of course,...

Peacock's progress Alexander Chancellor doubt if there can be any modern invention more threatening to the harmony of family life than those little things like pocket...

Sojourn in Siena Taki H aving had the misfortune to spend the best part of June indoors — in a courtroom to be exact — and next to some extremely unpleasant people, I decided...

Going to Golders Green Jeffrey Bernard B y the time you read this I will be in Portugal. Whether I shall be dead or alive though is a matter of conjecture. I had another...

The way of the West Alice Thomas Ellis I watched John Wayne being chased by Red Indians yesterday afternoon, They never caught him. They never did catch him despite...

David was made a Commander of the British Empire. It was richly deserved, for Mrs David's books are splendid. However, this was not enough for some newspapers, who portrayed Mrs...

I n Competition No. 1428 you were asked for an extract from the autobiography of a self-important but unimportant actor or actress. My own Thespian career is not, I fancy,...

Tuning up Raymond Keene A s the world championship approaches Fide has published its mid-year rating list. The top ten men are: Kasparov (USSR) 2740; Karpov (USSR) 2705; Yusu-...

° L I T EIEE T I 10 T VAANGELIUETOPPER T 19.EATHIFISEN W E RITM V OUR Dr% T11104RI t iVENIOWN I L _LA A RII j K IIN IEI T EINM" E R F E r-- ; D L E ITROBILAIEV ULC ' j ] R A I...

A lullaby or bedtime song, please, for the modern child (maximum 12 lines). Entries to 'Competition No. 1431' by 25 July.

A first prize of £20 and two further prizes of £10 (or a copy of Chambers Dictionary, value £12.95 — ring the words 'Chambers Dictionary' above) will be awarded for the first...